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How many watts does your computer use?

EquaLiZr

EquaLiZr

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Figured id pickup a kill a watt type device and see how much my devices are pulling. I looked back as far as 2 months and couldnt find another thread like it so i thought id start one :)

At bootup it uses around 250W and at idle it uses 175W. When playing a demanding game (Serious sam 3 at ultra) it uses.....Wow, only 380W?? Specs are in my sig.

I thought a rig like this would use more than that.

EDIT: Just tried Trine 2 maxed out and it uses 420W.
 
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nope, thats about right, that's why i have always told people these stupid high wattage PSU's are way overkill and unnecessary. The power supply companies have been getting rich off of unnecessary excess in the enthusiast "bigger is better" computer market. For most systems, even high end desktops heavily overclocked, a high quality 500-600W PSU is plenty even with overhead. I ran a hot AMD Opteron 165 X2 system way overclocked and with SLI 8800 video cards on a Antec Earthwatts 550W PSU with zero issues.
 
Chances are, you have vsync on, so you are not maxing out your 7970. And there's no way that you will be maxing out your 920 either. That being said, your computer will probably max out around 400 watts from the PSU, or 450-500 watts from the wall.
 
the gpu is not overclocked but the cpu is to 3.75ghz and vsync is always off. 2x 200mm fans, 3x 120mm fans as well
 
I love my kill-a-watt. Really opened my eyes to how much the machine is using compared to how much I thought it was using a couple years ago when I bought it.

Right now running i5 2500k at 4500mhz, 580 SLI at 900mhz, D5 vario, 7 fans, a pair of SSD and a single HDD I max out at 775w at the wall, running prime95 and furmark at the same time. Normal gaming never gets past 600w at the wall.
 
nobody_here said:
nope, thats about right, that's why i have always told people these stupid high wattage PSU's are way overkill and unnecessary.
Click to expand...

Well, some of us do make use of our high wattage power supplies.

powerkaw.jpg
 
yeah but look at the system......what i was talking about is the guy with a single cpu, single gpu system being told to go for a 1kW PSU.....obviously there are applications for all size PSU's
 
EquaLiZr said:
Figured id pickup a kill a watt type device and see how much my devices are pulling. I looked back as far as 2 months and couldnt find another thread like it so i thought id start one :)

At bootup it uses around 250W and at idle it uses 175W. When playing a demanding game (Serious sam 3 at ultra) it uses.....Wow, only 380W?? Specs are in my sig.

I thought a rig like this would use more than that.

EDIT: Just tried Trine 2 maxed out and it uses 420W.
Click to expand...

Actually, the power draw as indicated by a Kill-A-Watt or similar device does not factor in the power factor correctly. It is almost always deceptively low if you're using a very-high-efficiency PSU (in which case your rig is actually drawing quite a bit more wattage from the wall than the Kill-A-Watt indicates). KaW is reasonably accurate only with a low-efficiency PSU (no greater than 70% efficiency) with no PFC circuit.
 
I have a 590GTX and when I push it with artificial test tools (3DMark) my Kill-A-Watt goes over 600W during the test. But again, this video card is overkill.

IMG_20120106_152405.jpg
 
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